Overall: It’s good, no doubt. The graphics are excellent. But it feels like it’s missing something new. In pre-beta builds, they had several different new mechanics that looked even more interesting(like the mothership’s time stop and planet cracker, phoenix overload). I wish they’d put some of those features back in. They’ve gone with a build that looks more like the original than I would like.

Strategic: The new cliff jumping and destructible rocks really change things. It’s much harder to just defend a base from a single choke point, and static defenses are slightly weaker than they used to be. Those two things put together mean that the game is less turtling and more aggression than the original. In addition, the mid-game ground units are pretty weak, so after the early game, it becomes a race to air units. This isn’t good or bad, just different. Overall, the games are noticeably shorter, I think most games are 12 minutes or less. The maps are good, and the map editor will supposedly be excellent.

Balance: It’s in flux of course as they test and tweak, but overall it’s pretty good. There will no doubt have to be some changes, probably even after release, but right now it doesn’t feel too bad. We’ve already had 3 patches and they’ve taken care of several things that I thought weren’t working.

Specifics: I really like Colossi, and in general I like Terrans. I like how they’ve given races slightly more differentiating abilities, like Zerg get a speed bonus on creep, Protoss Warp Gates can summon units anywhere with pylon power, and Terrans can lift off buildings and switch the building add ons between different types of buildings.

Also there’s been a change in how he solves problems. We are doing the same simple jigsaw puzzle we did a year ago, it’s got about 50 big pieces or so. We’ve done the puzzle dozens of times. When we did it a year ago, he’d memorize the picture on a piece and be able to put it exactly where it went. It was impressive, he’d do a better job than I would much of the time. Now he solves the puzzle algorithmically the way I do. He analyzes a piece and searches for neighbors, unfortunately it’s quite a bit slower than his old methodology, but at least it doesn’t require repetition to get better.

Lucas is starting to learn to read, but hasn’t gotten too far yet. He’s probably average or a bit ahead for his age, but I would like him to overachieve a little more.

First, doctors are paid by the procedures they do and not the overall quality of life that they provide to the public they serve.

Second, health insurance agencies can achieve financial success by avoiding paying out claims. Insurance companies spend a large amount of effort to avoid covering expensive patients and procedures.

Third, consumers have no way of ever understanding, valuing or navigating through the health care system without professional help.

I think we need a publicly funded health care option. It’s critical for someone you trust to step in between the consumer and health care provider to give you the best value for care, set cost limits, and negotiate with providers. Government may not be the most efficient way of doing this, but at least you don’t have to second guess the intentions of the government like you do with an insurance company.

I opted for the Pioneer and got it installed overnight. I’m pretty happy with the system so far, but it has a few issues. I have to go back for a second install because they didn’t have the parts do the dashboard finishing and they disconnected the old display features like the climate control system. The unit itself is pretty good, but a couple of the controls I had to look at the manual for. The nav system is pretty good. The ipod controls are good. The Bluetooth phone seems fine but I’ve only used it minimally and I don’t really expect to use it much. Among the less expected features, a USB jack, an auxiliary RCA jack, a mini SD card jack, voice recognition for playing albums, software upgradeability, HD Radio ready. It cost about $1k installed(the Parrot would’ve cost about half that), but I now have the audio flexibility I wanted.

We’re back from our 1 week vacation in Cabo San Lucas. Lucas liked to call it Cabo San Me. We met Tracy’s family there and we spent a lot of time in the sun at the pool and on the beach. The great thing about Cabo is the location, it’s less than a 5 hour flight from almost everywhere in the US. While at the airport coming in, we were roped into getting a timeshare presentation in exchange for a bunch of discounts on activities.

The timeshare presentation was actually mildly interesting. I’d never had one before, so it was an experience to learn how they sell it. They had deals from about $15-30k for a 1-2 bedroom unit for a week. Doing a full purchase of the 2br unit would cost over $2 million. The timeshare program was more flexible than I’d realized. You can use it at any of several different properties, you can bank your weeks or take an advance on them. There’s also a full 3rd party timeshare exchange program in case you don’t feel like using those properties. Not that I was really interested. I guess it’s my parents influence that I’d prefer real ownership, though not at that price. Two of the ridiculous things they did in the presentation were to project out the cost of your future vacations with an inflation rate of 6-9% and to charge 15% interest if you financed the purchase.

We took a bunch of pictures and they are at http://tierneychen.shutterfly.com/. We stayed at the Puerto Bonito Blanco and it was pretty nice. Not the nicest hotel around, but all the rooms had ocean views and it was conveniently located. We ate a bunch of local restaurants, Casanova, Alexanders, Mi Casa, Sweet Bistro, Peacocks, Arts and Sushi. Mi Casa had really good carnitas, I had a good sea bass at both Casanova and Peacocks. The prices were a bit more than I expected, probably about comparable to what you’d pay in the US. One thing about the restaurants in Cabo is the different speed of service. They were all extremely slow compared to typical American restaurants. I think every meal out lasted more than an hour and a half.

The whole area was the emptiest I’ve ever seen a tourist town. Several nights there were only 1-2 other parties at the restaurants. It’s a combination of the swine flu aftermath, the economy, and the slow season, but I couldn’t see how any place we went was making money. One of the restaurant owners talked to us a bit and he said that the Mexican government was offering businesses super low interest rate loans so that they could keep people employed for a bit while they suffered through the downturn. Things did seem to be picking up when we were leaving.

We went on a glass bottom boat tour and I played a very bad round of golf at the Cabo San Lucas Country Club(I shot around 120 I’m pretty sure). Lauren didn’t sleep very well and that prevented us from sleeping really well. At the airport on the way home, she had an epic vomit. She must have projectile vomitted 12-16 ounces of curdled milk. It was pretty nasty. Thankfully it didn’t happen in the airplane, so Tracy was able to get something different to wear that didn’t smell.

Good fun all in all. I highly recommend it. I hear they are having great deals on hotel and air. And the location was convenient for everyone that went.

My round was the best I’ve ever played, we shot an 87 with me taking 40 and Kojo 47. On the first hole I hit a tee shot within 8 feet of the hole and then sank the putt. That was the only birdie I’ve ever made in my life. I only had a complete whiff once, and I only shanked 1 or 2 other tee shots. All my other drives were clean and my putting was very good as well. My short game is pretty bad though, I can’t hit a sand wedge at all. There was one hole where I hit it onto a different fairway and Kojo hit it onto the correct fairway, but my shot was actually closer to the pin, but Kojo insisted on using his ball. The tee off #12 will forever be known as “the shot that Kojo stole”.

We lost the main bet due to a minor meltdown double bogie on 18th where the other team parred. We pushed on the side bets because every person made their required stroker percentage I needed 40% and made 45%, the other two made their requirements by less than 2%. This is either a clear sign of cheating or brilliant odds making by me. You choose.

All in all, Scramble is a super fun format. It’s much better for us beginners because it prevents the meltdown +4 holes that are so frustrating. I hope to someday play as well as I did.

We went out to Phoenix a couple of weeks ago to visit Tracy’s brother and dad. That was good, it’s nice out there. It wouldn’t be a bad place to retire, but the summer heat can be tough.

We also spent a weekend up at Yosemite. There was some drama because we were totally unprepared for snow and it dropped more than a foot on us overnight. We got stuck for a bit, but it wasn’t too bad once the sun came up and melted some of it away.

More pictures at: http://tierneychen.shutterfly.com/

Work is fine, working on some interesting projects that I can’t really talk about. Tracy’s work is fine. The economy is making life interesting, there’s lots of opportunities for making money I think. I wish there was a way I could invest in the toxic asset purchase plan or PPIP as it’s called.